Chapter 2
TIAGO
“So, what’s the prognosis? Ten days to live? Twenty?”
I shot a glare toward the corner of the room where I knew Boden was sitting. To my left, Tucker was pacing, his stress making his steps so hard that I could hear clicking noises coming from his prosthetic ankles.
“I mean, we all have to die someday, right? Death and taxes…” I started. Was there a third thing? I couldn’t really remember.
Tucker’s steps froze, and I turned my head to the right so I could see him leaning over me. His scarred eye was clearer after his corneal transplant, and according to him, he could see better than before the accident.
I was pretty sure that was bullshit, but it was probably bullshit to keep people from asking invasive questions about how much he could see.
“What?” I demanded when he said nothing.
He sniffed. “I just…why do I feel like this was my fault?”
“I mean, if you were a better coach,” Boden began.
“Mon coeur.” Hugo’s rumble came from the doorway. “Please be nice to your friends. They’re all very stressed.”
“Tucker’s just pissed that he lost his best performing D-man during playoffs,” Boden said.
Tucker disappeared out of my line of sight, and I sat up and leaned forward so I could try to see him better. So far away, he was a blurry mess, but I could make out the glint of his crutches sitting to his right.
“You’re being a bigger dick than usual today,” I pointed out.
Hugo’s sigh floated across the room. “Being knocked out of the playoffs always upsets him.”
“If I had a better coach,” Boden began, then went quiet. “You know what, I should probably go. I don’t need to rain all over your parade with my bad mood.” He stood up and shuffled toward me.
“Hold the fuck up,” Tucker said, grabbing Boden before he could reach the side of my bed. “Who exactly is going to drive us home?”
“That would be me,” Hugo told him. “Boden was on his rideshare app just now.”
My heart sank as I pulled my friend in for a hug. “You don’t have to go, Bodie. I don’t mind if you’re being a dick.”
He smudged a kiss along my temple. “That’s the morphine talking. You’ll remember what an asshole I was later and be pissed at me for it.”
I doubted it. Yes, I was a little stoned on the good drugs, but I was also used to my friend. He wasn’t as much of an ass now as he was before he met Hugo. This was a palatable asshole.
A tolerable dick.
“You know you’re talking out loud, right?” Tucker asked.
Boden burst into laughter and hugged me again. “Get better soon,” he muttered in French. Mine was far more rusty than his was. I mostly grew up in Detroit, spending summers at my parents’ cottage near Quebec City. But it was nice to hear my first language.
“I’ll do my best.”
I hadn’t told either of them that my future with the PPHL was uncertain. All the scans after surgery had come back with some promise, but only time would tell, and right now, I needed months to heal before I could even think about putting a skate on my foot.
Luckily, I didn’t need my white cane during the day, so walking on crutches wouldn’t be too hard. And at night, I would just call for delivery and beg whoever was nearby to do errands for me.
“I’m going to walk Boden out,” Hugo announced. I appreciated that he was learning how to vocalize in a room full of people without full vision. “I’ll be back before you’re discharged.”
“You think they’re gonna fuck in his car?” Tucker asked as he took Boden’s now abandoned chair.
I pulled a face. “That is so not my business.”
“That’s what I’d do. I mean, not with Hugo, obviously. But I guarantee you that Amedeo would be trying to fuck the grumpy out of me if I said that shit to you.”
I laughed. It was mostly the drugs, but I tried to picture shy, anxious Amedeo fucking the grumpy out of Tucker, and, yeah…actually, it probably worked well for them. And then I got sore all over, but inside this time because I would love someone to come fuck me happy right now.
But I had zero prospects and zero desire to try that dating bullshit ever again.
“So,” Tucker said. I could hear the hesitation in his voice.
I knew he’d been waiting for the right time to ask about my knee, which was currently the size of a small summer melon the way it was all wrapped in ice for the swelling.
Luckily, I couldn’t feel shit.
“Do we have to talk about this right now?”
Tucker sighed. “No, but—”
Fuck’s sake. “I have zero prognosis for my knee right now. The surgeon said the procedure was a success, but I won’t have any idea if I’ll be able to get back on the ice after this. You know this fuck-ass tear is a career killer.”
Tucker’s exhale was shaky. “I know. And I hope you realize Boden is wrong. It’s not just the fact that you’re a beast on the ice. You’re my friend, and—”
“Tuck, you don’t have to sell yourself to me. We’ve been friends for years.”
Long before he was my coach. Long before he was anywhere near professional para hockey. Back when he was a punk-ass pain in the ass that wanted everyone else around him to suffer too, he was one of the few people in my life that I trusted.
And now he was married. He’d made amends with his brother. His life had come together in ways that none of us ever expected, and I couldn’t be happier for him if I tried. Well, maybe I could.
Tiny flames of jealousy burned inside me, taking up space. But I was pretty sure I was hiding it well.
Tucker stood up again, then dragged the chair to the side of my bed and dropped down, leaning his chin on the railing. “What will you do, eh? Uh…if you can’t, you know…”
He wasn’t going to say the words aloud. He was too superstitious for that.
“Well, Coach…”
“Fuck off.”
I grinned and ruffled his hair. “I don’t know. I have time to figure it out. I’ve been living in the city and doing nothing but playing hockey and jerking off for the last six years. I have piles of money I’ve been sitting on.”
Okay, not piles, but I was smart. I listened to my dad, who’d actually given me his honest attention for the first time ever when I got my seven-figure contract after my third year with the Legends. He helped me invest and diversify and all that other stock market shit I still didn’t understand.
I paid a guy named Andrew whose face I’d never seen to manage it all for me, and I was worth a lot of money now.
Go me.
I could take time to figure it out.
“If I keep living like this,” I said, “I don’t ever have to work again.”
“You’d go out of your mind,” Tucker replied, sitting back in the chair. “You know you would.”
He was right. Someone else in a similar position to me might say they’d travel. Buy an RV and go coast to coast, East to West, then North to South. But that wasn’t in my cards. I’d have to pay someone with decent eyesight to drive me, and I’d be broke before we hit Seattle.
So yeah, I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself.
I’d stumbled into hockey as a means of coping with vision loss.
I was told left, right, and center by occupational therapists and VI teachers that my best option was to file for disability early because companies weren’t likely to take a risk on a man who’d probably be totally blind before he was forty.
Shit advice, but I internalized so much of it that I gave up trying to figure out if I actually had any passions at all.
Right now, it was collecting coffee mugs with cats on them, making sure the two ferns I had growing on my bookshelf didn’t die, and carving out enough hours during my off time that I could keep ahead of the three shows I gave a shit about.
Which, god, sounded so pathetic.
“Can we talk about this later?” I asked. My voice was so hoarse I knew it betrayed me, but Tucker didn’t call me on it.
“Yeah, of course. I’m gonna step out and call Amedeo. He should have the keys to your new place by now.”
It took my brain, all fogged on painkillers, a few seconds to remember what he was talking about, but yeah, that’s right.
I was renting a furnished apartment for a few weeks because my house had three floors and no elevator, and I wasn’t going to risk braining myself from a fall trying to get creative on the staircase.
By the time I looked for Tucker, he was out of the room, and the silence around me settled. I was off all my monitors finally, so the only mystery dings happening were from patients in other rooms.
I wasn’t a huge fan of silence. It made me feel very alone, especially with the static in my periphery slowly closing in. My vision had gone terrifyingly narrow after the hit on the ice, but things were looking a bit more normal for me.
Except…
When I closed my left eye, my right eye was down to a few pinpricks of sight in the center, but the fuzzy grey parts were so large now it was impossible to make out a single image. I was left-eye dominant, so I hadn’t noticed before.
But god, sometimes it was so hard to accept that this was an inevitability. That one day, I was going to wake up, and all I’d see was the strange, dark fog that never let a single bit of light in.
I swallowed thickly and opened both eyes. Breathing came easier when more of the room popped into view. I didn’t need to worry about this now. I had an eye appointment coming up, and I could face the stress of how much was gone then. It was a future Tiago problem.
It was a—
“This place is a maze.”
I froze. I wasn’t expecting to hear my brother’s voice. My parents and my siblings tended to avoid me like the plague, especially during the season. They didn’t like being around other blind guys because it reminded them about what was coming.
Once, my brother told me I acted more blind around them, and I didn’t talk to him for three months because what the fuck was that supposed to mean?
But I guess I wasn’t surprised to see him. If my parents had come, I might have had a heart attack, but Thierry was their gopher. Their flying monkey. He did their bidding without question, no matter who it hurt or whose life it disrupted.